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Saturday, February 18, 2017

Coding In Kindergarten? Yes! - Part 2

Each day I met with a group of six
students (in partners), using 3 Beebots, at the main carpet area. The students
faced me, and I set the mats to one side.

I showed them the command buttons
on the Beebot: forward, left turn, right turn, backwards, stop, and
"x" for cancel the previous program (like a reset). Then they
explored using the BeeBots.

On the carpet, one partner told the other
partner to program the Beebot, eg. forward, forward, right turn. Then they
switched. Some students were quite shy and it took a while for them to
verbalize to their partner. But all were successful. This time also
allowed the students to play with the BeeBots on their own, and to share with
their partner after each turn. Then they all returned to face me.

I placed the Treasure Island map in front
of me so they could see it, and asked them to name all the different things
they could see. They did really well with all this vocabulary and identified:
ladder, bridge, octopus, volcano, sharks, secret passage. I prompted them
to identify the groups of trees and the river, and anything else they did
not name. Then I explained that the BeeBot would be placed in the
corner and one partner would challenge the other to "go to x
location." Then they would switch.

With the clear grid, I used a nice stone
from the classroom collection. One student placed the stone in a square, and
the other would get the BeeBot to move from a location at the edge of the mat
to touch the stone.

Once the two groups were dispersed, I
introduced the streetscape, as it took a bit longer to identify all the
locations. Some are sort of urban, and not readily identifiable to our
students. One or two students could read the names on the storefronts. Same
routine, with one partner asking the other to get the BeeBot to go to a
specific location.

Timing: approximately ten minutes to
introduce, ten minutes at their first map, and then ten minutes at a second
map. They took their own BeeBots and moved to a new map.

Instructions I found myself using:

What is the path it would take, can you
point to the path?

How many steps?

Right turn or left turn?

Let's count out the steps before pressing
the buttons.

With the streetscape, I told them to have
the BeeBot enter the store, not just drive down the street to that location.

Strategies I observed:

One-to-one tapping of squares and
buttons, with one hand tapping the squares forming the path, and the other
simultaneously tapping the BeeBot buttons.